Campus Confessions: Having a baby while still in university ruined my dating life

Picture this, you have just got into your dream university, studying a course you are passionate about. 

Now imagine after the first year life takes a different turn not going as you would have expected. You end up getting a girl pregnant, forcing you to make some tough decisions. 

This is what happened to Moses Irungu during his second year at Egerton University, where he was pursuing a bachelor's degree in animal science.

Here is his story.....

Getting a baby on campus is one of the biggest life-changing moments you can have. Well, when I was in my second year, I had my firstborn daughter, which changed my life.

I didn't change my priorities immediately. But eventually I had to find a job to take care of the child's needs and find a balance between my job, my studies and parenting.

Luckily, I found out about the pregnancy when I was on my long holiday, so I got a paid internship to start saving before the baby arrived. I also moved out of the hostels and continued with the small business I had on campus, selling flash drives.

Things were going well between me and the mother of my child, so much so that we were blessed with another child.

At the time I believed I had found the one because I hadn't thought about us splitting up. Everything was fine until it wasn't. And as they say things happen.

We decided to go our separate ways and find a way to co-parent, which we did. After a year and a half I tried dating again, which went well until the day I told my partner that I had two children that I was co-parenting with their mother.

This was met with a series of questions about my honesty, as I hadn't mentioned it when we first started dating.

She also took issue with the fact that I hadn't posted my children on social media. She thought that was suspicious behaviour.

And so we broke up. I decided to try my luck with another girl, this time with lessons from the previous one, because it can't hurt to start all over again.

I told her from the start that I had children, even though I did not live with them, and she was fine with that.  When the time came for me to spend time with my daughters, it all went to hell.

You see, when I go to spend time with my children, I always want to give them 100 per cent of my time, and most of the time that means I have little or no access to my phone. 

So it happened that on one of those days when I was with my daughters, she tried to call me and I didn't answer or respond to her text immediately.

When I got home, she told me we needed to talk; we all dread those words, don't we? So we sat down to have the talk.

I was surprised by her list of 'ten reasons why I cannot continue to date you'. What surprised me even more was number seven, that I couldn't be trusted because I didn't return her calls.

Since then, I have decided to focus on myself until I am ready to dive into the murky waters of dating, because I have realised that compatibility is better than love.